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“All the water, wind and nature here, it’s the perfect place to stay, and my husband’s getting the best treatment,” she says.

The bonds she’s forged in Brecon are helping her through a difficult time and her face opens into a wide smile when I ask her what the backing of the town’s Nepalese Society means to her.

“The community is like a brother, sister, son, daughter and it feels like a family,” Keshkumari adds.

“When there are parties and gatherings I really enjoy them, even if my husband can’t make it sometimes. I go with my friends and there’s a sense of community and social circle,” she adds.

She and her husband are among between 70 and 80 Nepalese families living in and around the Powys town thanks to Brecon’s history with Gurkha soldiers who were first stationed at the Dering Lines base in 1974.

There are now some 70 serving Gurkhas in Brecon, who train and support future British Army leaders, but you’re just as likely to see or meet a Gurkha who has retired, or one of their family, in the area.

Gurkhas, all originally from the hills and towns of Nepal, were made honorary citizens of the town in 1985.

It was a mark of the well-founded pride in soldiers who are characterised by toughness and bravery, from a brigade which has worked for the British Crown for over 200 years.

The British Army calls the Gurkhas’ contribution “a rich heritage marked by excellence and sacrifice” spanning the early Afghan wars of the 19th century, the two World Wars and subsequent conflicts including the Gulf and Falklands wars.

It came as a shock to many, then, to discover that, despite this illustrious history and service to British causes, Gurkhas who’d retired before 1997 had been denied the opportunity to remain living in Britain.

Absolutely Fabulous actor Joanna Lumley, whose father was a Gurkha, famously spearheaded a campaign for them to be allowed to stay. It eventually brought legal changes allowing most retired Gurkhas, their wives and dependant children to settle.

Those who’ve decided to make Brecon their home aren’t just from families who had soldiers based locally. The reputation of the Welsh market town as a place of warmth and welcome has also attracted former Gurkhas from further afield.

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In turn, this now-sizeable community has been keen to give back to its adopted home, and in 2011, retired Gurkha Major Guptaman Gurung MBE helped found the Brecon Nepalese Society, which is undertaking voluntary work in the Brecon Beacons National Park.

Guptaman started his career as an 18-year-old rifleman in Hong Kong, serving all over the world in his 32 years in the army, including Afghanistan, Kosovo and Bosnia.

His final posting was in Brecon, and before the immigration changes in 2009, he’d always imagined he’d return to Nepal.

“Before the terms and conditions changed, all Gurkhas had to go back to Nepal and that was my mentality, to go back.

“Having served so many years in the army, perhaps I could have helped my local community with all my knowledge and expertise,” he said.

But, with a 22-year-old daughter Garima who’s grown up in the UK, and his wife Jagansuba also working in the area, the 56-year-old sees their future very much in this rural part of Wales.

And it’s now the foothills of the Brecon Beacons rather than those of the Himalayas that benefit from his extensive experience, effort and skills.

“I attended something called the BAME project, that is a black and minority ethnic project, with the Brecon Beacons National Park,” he explains.

“And from there, I learned so many things about community engagement and volunteering.

“I’ve been here for almost 10 years or so myself, and I knew there was really good scope, so I approached Brecon Town Council and the Brecon Beacons National Park and they offered us this project,” he says, as we start walking a mile-and-a-half-long trail officially named The Gurkha Path.

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Gurkha veterans and families join together to look after the hills near their home (Image: Peter Bolter)

(Image: Peter Bolter)

(Image: Peter Bolter)

(Image: Peter Bolter)

(Image: Peter Bolter)

The riverbank walk, originally overgrown and hazardous underfoot, has won a national award since it was transformed by an army of these Nepalese volunteers, from teenagers to community elders.

Over a period of six months, they cleared the path, laid down a more stable surface, and constructed a bridge and decking to create a serene and safer walk alongside the River Usk.

It needs regular maintenance, and I joined them with photographer Peter Bolter as an enthusiastic group of 27 volunteers, some equipped with the traditional Gurkha Kukri knives, take up the call to carry out the work on a sunny bank holiday weekend.

The weather is quite different from some of the conditions they encountered when the path was being built.

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“Initially I thought it would be nice and easy,” Guptaman says. “But it was all overgrown, and no-one actually walked on this footpath. It took quite some time, more than I anticipated.

“Sometimes it was raining, sometimes it was really, really cold, but the good thing is, every time we came out, everybody, especially the elders, really, really enjoyed it.”

It was the older men and women who did a lot of the heavy lifting, Guptaman says. As we stand at the top of a steep bank, he points to the river below and explains how they created a new surface from the path by hand-dredging small stones from the edges of the Usk.

“It was around 40-or-so sandbags full of gravel I would say that they brought up from the river bank,” he tells me.

As we continue on along the path, some of the women in their late fifties, sixties and seventies use bunches of twigs to sweep the surface clear and there’s energy and excitement as they chat in Nepali.

“One of the most challenging things we came across was this part,” Guptaman continues, leading us over wooden decking they’d built, with steps to bring walkers safely down what was a treacherous incline leading to a peaceful riverside bay.

The immaculately-constructed decking, and a wooden bridge, owe much to the expertise of foreman Mahadev Thapa, who served 15 years as an Royal Engineer and is a former chairman of the Brecon Nepalese Society. He tells me proudly of how his family boasts four generations of Gurkhas, including his son.

“This is what I did when I was in our regiment,” he says, standing on the wooden bridge. “I learned it there, and I’ve used it now here.

“The bridge was only one plank, we had to make this safe.”

His workforce for this project ranged from teenagers to the veterans in their 70’s and it’s not just the physical effort and fruit of their labours that matter.

The voluntary work is only one aspect of what the Nepalese society sets out to do.

Another heartfelt element is keeping alive Nepalese customs amongst the Gurkha children who’ve grown up in the UK.

“There’s a little bit of a problem because most of the youngsters are more towards the western culture,” Mahadev says.

“So, we are asking them to be involved with our culture, like food and dance,” he says.

“We want to keep our traditions and language too. Most of the youngsters speak English all day in school, and it makes it hard for them to understand their grandparents if they come to visit them from Nepal.”

He told me the Nepalese society is now thinking about arranging lessons for the younger people to keep their own language alive in Wales.

Newton Limbu is among the volunteers we meet that day. He’s 15 and his ex-Gurkha soldier dad Guman runs a shop in Brecon selling foodstuffs popular in the Himalayas.

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Newton Limbu is 15 and proud to be a Gurkha's son (Image: Peter Bolter)

“I’m proud to know my dad’s been defending the country, not just Nepal but the UK as well. I’m proud to be the son of a Gurkha,” he says.

“I’ve grown up in Brecon pretty much all my life,” he says. “The Welsh community has been especially helpful with me fitting in.

“The Nepalese Society is really important, because we want to keep our traditions going, not just in Nepal but around other areas of the world as well,” he says. “It’s important for us to know about the traditions and culture of Nepal and hopefully pass it on to our future children as well.”

Garima is a little older than Newton, and the daughter of our guide for the day, retired major Guptaman Gurung.

It’s Garima who helps us with translation when we speak to and photograph some of the older women who have limited English.

Garima Gurung, 22, has a strong sense of community (Image: Peter Bolter)

The 22-year-old economics graduate was born in Nepal, and moved around the UK as well as living in Brunei because of her dad’s career.

She’s counted Brecon as her home for around eight years, and says the Nepalese Society is instrumental in helping shape their sense of heritage.

“It is really important to have a sense of community, especially for young people. Sometimes you kind of feel like you don’t fit in especially when you haven’t been born here, and the same for your parents.”

She says if she has children in the future, it would be very important to keep that connection with her family background.

“Just not to forget your roots,” she says. “We have different festivals that we celebrate as a culture and as a Nepalese community.

“That brings us all together and also there are lot of veterans here that have come from Nepal and as a community, it’s to help them.

“I know the Brecon community help them as well, but when it’s your community and people from your culture, there’s a different connection there as well.”

She says the festivals keep their religion active amongst the younger people. Nepal has a mix of faiths and I ask her what her religion is.

“I’d say I’m Buddhist, because my family is Buddhist, but it’s weird because we celebrate Hindu festivals as well as there’s a strong Buddhist and Hindu community in Nepal... we just grow up celebrating everything. I can’t say I’m not Hindu as well.”

Former Gurkha major Khusiman Gurung is the Brecon Nepalese Society’s chief advisor and came to the town eight years ago, serving at the Dering Line base.

He retired from army life a year ago and tells me about how the society raised money for the victims of Nepal’s devastating 2015 earthquake.

The society also observe all the festivals in the Nepali calendar, he says.

“Festivals like Dashain, which is similar to Christmas,” he adds. “It’s a festival for all Nepali, regardless of religious, caste or tribe. We all get together in one big place and celebrate that festival in the traditional way.

“Wearing our own costumes, we have our own food on that day and we organise traditional Nepali dances as well.

“It’s to keep our tradition alive and teach the younger generation we are trying our best here in Wales.”

He has two children, one at university, and another studying for her GCSEs in Brecon, and says they ask a lot of the young Gurkha descendants.

“They go to school and learn everything in English, and then when they come back home, or in the society, we ask them to follow our culture, which is very difficult for them.

“But, we are not asking them to strictly follow our culture, we’re just trying to get them along to various events and it’s up to them whether they want to follow, or just know about it.”

(Image: Peter Bolter)

(Image: Peter Bolter)

(Image: Peter Bolter)

(Image: Peter Bolter)

(Image: Peter Bolter)

Khil Gurung, who’s vice-chairman of the Brecon Nepalese Society, wasn’t actually stationed in Brecon, but was attracted to to the area because of what it offered those from the mountains of Nepal.

“I had a family member who served in the Brecon army camp here. Initially I settled in Wembley, but when I came to visit Brecon, I found this place very beautiful, with hills as well, so you can refresh your mind back to home sometimes.

“If the terms and conditions hadn’t changed, we’d have had no choice, no job opportunities after retirement, we would have gone back to Nepal to do farming or something like that, but now we all have opportunity to get different jobs,” he adds. “It makes me very secure.

“This is home now,” he says, “I’m happy and my family are settled here.”

However, he recognises life outside the army can be challenging. There’ve been lurid headlines in the Aldershot area where other Gurkha families have settled since the 2009 changes with reports that some have struggled to adapt.

Brecon is different, Khil says.

“The people in Brecon, I find, are really, really generous,” he tells me, “They’re fantastic, and this is one of the reasons why I moved here.

“When I served two year in Church Crookham, near Aldershot at that time, we didn’t see so many people and there weren’t so many Nepalese.

“This is why, when I came here in 2008, we were the first people to start this community with Guptaman, who was still in service.

“We talked about how to make the community strong because we knew how hard it was to settle outside the army, we could see that need there.

“In 2008, there were only five civilian familes like us outside the camp. Now we have about 80 families, and our responsibilities have grown.

“We are so happy with the local people here, they support us so much.”

Khil first joined the Gurkhas in Hong Kong as an infantry soldier, also working in Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the UK.

He trained as a dental hygienist in the Brigade of Gurkhas and after leaving the army, he became civilian dental hygienist to the military in Brunei for three years before making a permanent move to the UK with his family.

But, he experienced at first-hand how difficult it was to find work in the job he’d been trained to do.

He now has a mix of occupations as a team leader in a residential home and then using a very different skillset in an acting role, of sorts, playing dead for some of the time as soldiers train for combat duty.

“It’s a role-playing job,” he explains. “That means all the soldiers come here for their career course, and we’re recruited to work as enemy for the soldiers.

“I’ve never fired so many blank rounds in my life! I very much enjoy it.”

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The society also acts as an unofficial employment service when Gurkhas retire, or when their families are seeking work.

“We try to help with finding jobs. If we see any jobs advertised, then we pass it on to friends.

“Between us, we make sure everybody has a job.”

The society also gives them support in other ways, navigating bureaucracy, helping if a patient needs a translator when they access medical services.

“Quite a few senior citizens don’t speak good English,” Khil adds. “We try to help them with paperwork, or if they’re not well, we try to help.

“It’s good things and bad things.

“Sometimes it’s if somebody passes away. When we started to settle down here, we didn’t know who to contact so now we know what to do, how to contact the undertaker, how it works.

“We all come together to sort out that problem.

“This is one of the main objectives or our community, when people die, or they’re married, we actively help those people through the process.

“It’s all gone smoothly so far, but this is why forming this community was so vital. We help each other, and in the meantime we need to integrate with the local community as well. If we don’t know, we just ask for advice, through the council, through experts.”

We’re coming back to the starting-point of the path as we talk, where some of the wives have filled a picnic bench with spiced chai tea in flasks, cold drinks and sandwiches.

By now, the volunteers are sitting, eating and talking, Keshkumari Rana and the older men and women are relaxing under the trees.

Khil and the other Nepalese Society leaders in Brecon are very aware of the social benefits the work on the path brings to their community, especially the veteran members, and in turn, how that creates a better environment for others in the Brecon Beacons National Park.

“It’s keeping the Nepalese community active and intact,” he says.

“It makes them healthy as well, it’s good for the community and the walkers who come on this path.

“As Gurkhas, we are happy and we like to help each other and we want to make sure our name, Gurkha, is always there through the generations.”